Soheyla Alaei - in TEFL, Department of English Language, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Bojnord University, Bojnord, Iran
Tahereh Heydarnejad - Ph. D. in TEFL, English lecturer, Department of English Language, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Gonabad, Gonabad, Iran

Fresh advancement of game-based learning in the modern era provides a good incentive for researchers to unleash the potential of games in order to improve education. The celebrated term known as serious games refers to the pre-established games which were replayed with a serious purpose of learning. The present study is a mixed-method research design to explore the influence of using a serious game on fostering the learning of English grammar among pre-intermediate EFL learners. The participants of this study were ۴۳ English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. In the quantitative phase, a quasi-experiment design was used. To observe the influence of game-based learning with a focus on the grammar structure, an independent samples t-test was run. To co-complete the quantitative phase, a semi-structured interview was conducted among ۱۲ participants from the experimental group. The findings revealed that the participants who have learned the grammatical structure through the serious game were more successful in using the grammar structures productively. They were also more engaged in producing complex grammatical structures. Therefore, the triangulation of data represented a high level of potentiality and acceptance of using serious games for grammar learning. The findings of the current study may foster the related knowledge in language learning and teaching

Serious games, Game-based learning, Learning grammar, a mixed-method research design, EFL learners